Jane Lark, author of the recently-released romance novel, Illicit Love, has done a lot of reseaarch into the lives of real Georgian and Regency women for her books. In today’s article, she shares one of those true stories with us. This one is about a Miss L– and her amorous adventures in the Bath of Beau Nash. In fact, the famous Master of Ceremonies was complicit in this curious affair.

Today’s article is by Michele Ann Young, aka Ann Lethbridge, Regency romance author and one-time resident of the famous spa town of Royal Tunbridge Wells. More recently, she spent some time there on a research trip and provides us with a series of questions and answers regarding the history of this charming town in western Kent. She also explains why the town should never be called "Royal" in any stories set there during the Regency.

I must admit, I purloined that delicious phrase from the title of a brief article in The Republican, written by Richard Carlile, about Thomas Bowlder. In fact, it is a very apt description of what he did to some well-known books. His expunged editions of various books remained popular through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Bowdler’s name eventually came to be the source of a verb indicating expurgation.

But was Thomas Bowdler the lone "expunger of naughtiness" in the family?

Jane Austen‘s unfinished Bath novel sold for £993k on Saturday, July 16, 2011.

The Austen Manuscript

An amazing announcement from the Bath Chronicle and read more of their article….

An unfinished novel which Jane Austen started writing when she was living in Bath has been sold at auction for £993,000.

The handwritten parchment for The Watsons, which experts believe was only a quarter completed, has been sold by Sotheby’s to the Bodleian Library in Oxford. ​ The Austen manuscript It had been expected to fetch £200,000, but the rare nature of the work and the fact that it is the earliest surviving manuscript by Austen, meant it went for much more. It is believed to have been started in 1804, while she was living in Bath, but is believed to have abandoned it after the death of her father the following year.

Holly Newton, from Bath’s Jane Austen Centre, said: “She started the book when she was living in Bath and there is speculation about why she didn’t finish it.

“One theory is that the storyline was too close to home, too autobiographical. Also, she wasn’t particularly settled or happy when living in Bath. There were financial problems, her father died when she was living here, so it has been suggested that she had a lull in her writing when she was here because she wasn’t settled.”

The only surviving manuscripts of Austen’s completed novels are two draft chapters of Persuasion, which are kept at the British Library, her younger work Lady Susan, which is at the Morgan Library in New York, and Sanditon, which is at King’s College, Cambridge.

Ms Newton added that she was not surprised The Watsons had sold for such a large sum of money. She said: “Original Jane Austen-related artefacts would always go for a lot of money. There has been a recent surge in popularity and there is so much interest in her life and work. ……There aren’t many artefacts from her life, so these kind of pieces give us a real insight into how she worked.”

Experts believe Emma – the headstrong and independent-minded heroine of the novel – is based on the author herself.

The Jane Austen Centre is a permanent exhibition which tells the story of Jane’s Bath experience – the effect living there had on her and her writing.

Who wants to go? I do!

So come and have a look with me.

Jane Austen is perhaps the best known and best loved of Bath’s many famous residents and visitors. She paid two long visits here towards the end of the eighteenth century, and from 1801 to 1806 Bath was her home. Her intimate knowledge of the city is reflected in two of her novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, which are largely set in Bath.

The city is still very much as Jane Austen knew it, preserving in its streets, public buildings and townscapes the elegant well-ordered world that she portrays so brilliantly in her novels. Now the pleasure of exploring Jane Austen’s Bath can be enhanced by visiting the Jane Austen Centre in Gay Street. Here, in a Georgian town house in the heart of the city, the visitor can find out more about Bath in Jane Austen’s time and the importance of Bath in her life and work.

The Exhibition Information about the Centre’s permanent exhibition

The Regency Tea Rooms Award winning Tea Rooms up on the 2nd floor of the Centre

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